I'll get the facts tomorrow. I don't recall the manufacture. They are trying to promote it in the semi-conductor (high-purity SS) industry, pharmaceutical, powerhouse tubing and heat tracing on refinery tube. It does other things beside bend tube. Precisely and properly tightens Swagelok fittings consistantly, calculates the spring back for different wall thickness tube, cuts the tube. I don't see us using it but you never know. They are trying to take the skilled labor factor out of it, just like Propress eliminates the skill factor out of soldering and brazing, or PEX eliminate layout or installation skills (red goes to red etc.). The cost was something like $12,000 (that's not a typo). <grin>

-SD:

Dawai

07-20-2009, 08:16 AM

Lemme see.. standing on a Aframe ladder, (one leg kicked through and hooked so I can turn both hands loose) using a Rigid bender to bend .75"x.060 wall... yeah.. I like the ideal of punching in a degree and climbing back down into normal temps.

lazlo

07-20-2009, 11:18 AM

They are trying to promote it in the semi-conductor (high-purity SS) industry

I bought my Excello and my Harig surface grinder from two of the clean-room high-purity stainless steel pipefitting companies in Austin. Both shops have facilities in Chandler, Arizona (Intel's Fabs) -- I bet Mochinist knows who I'm talking about.

Both companies have similar equipment, and they both have large CNC bending machines that look like several hundred thousand dollars.
The benders have an integral bar feeder, and it ejects xx" of pipe, rotates it, bends it, ejects yy" more pipe, rotates it, bends it...

We (MickeyD and I) didn't get to see it operate, but it looks pretty amazing.

rotate

07-20-2009, 11:42 AM

... They are trying to take the skilled labor factor out of it, just like Propress eliminates the skill factor out of soldering and brazing, or PEX eliminate layout or installation skills (red goes to red etc.)....

This is a sore point for me. We have more and more ignorant people running around doing things that required knowledge and skill. Sigh.

Dawai

07-20-2009, 12:15 PM

Get over it, soon.. they have growed brain cells on a micro-chip in about 96.. a perfect interface when implanted in the human brain.. Imagine wearing a cdrom device like a walk-man cd player.. aww.. want to be a "professional pipe-fitter tubing-instrument techie today?" "insert proper disk".

hmm.. forward, rotate, bend, all calculated by the tiny serial plc (bought by madman off my bender) TIT iz now his gear-tooth rotator for his shaper or?? Heck I don't know, probably a place to sit a Canuck beer?

http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v2368/204/30/1298124187/n1298124187_30058596_7101.jpg
You saw it here first on the "hillbilly network" a few years back, nobody was paying much attention... ha.. somebody buy me lunch, I'm broke.

Measuring trolley is in ceiling, measures to ironworker, saw, welding rotator is there also, as is.. as is.. easily reconfigured to serve me, casting bot? burnout? or just a paintline track with a motor on it?

Just wait till you see the next one... aww.. nobody has patented it yet? it can do a free flow french curve in both directions, or a spiral rolled boiler tube or.. Buy me lunch and we'll talk about it..

madman

07-20-2009, 12:30 PM

David you come on up here and we will make you a Steak.

Dawai

07-20-2009, 02:50 PM

Hi Mike, Audrey.. NAHH... I want the rear end ham off a MOOSE.. ya double me up behind it on a 4 wheeler and I can lay it down with the big pistole.

Heck stand there and turn it on a spit over a open fire.. It'd take me a week to get up there on the bike, then it'd take me a week to get over riding up there, then...

Ya know I love ya two.. Just ain't leaving Gawgia right now.

Ya got that rotator making money yet?

(those who don't know it, Mike is a big galoot like me, his wife, she impressed us so much with her cooking, Carrol told the Co-workers and she has a free place to stay at "each coworkers house" as long as she wants..) They did ask if Madman had to come along tho.. ha... She got down in the floor and wrestled my 100lb pittbulldog.. ya.. we enjoyed that HSM'er visit. I think he gained ten pounds while they were here. Barry, Their buddy, he'd jump up onto the couch where he was sleeping and lick his face... I didn't have the heart to tell him he licked the cats butt, and ate out of the catbox too... he'd laugh, so I didn't spoil it..

Smokedaddy

07-20-2009, 11:54 PM

Here's the link ...

http://www.aeroswage.com/

-SD:

Smokedaddy

07-21-2009, 12:01 AM

I bought my Excello and my Harig surface grinder from two of the clean-room high-purity stainless steel pipefitting companies in Austin. Both shops have facilities in Chandler, Arizona (Intel's Fabs) -- I bet Mochinist knows who I'm talking about.

Since I am a retired Pipefiter and have worked semiconuctor and pharmaceuticals for the last 30 years plus ... I'm curious, who would that be, Kinetiics, University Mechanical, Harder, Henderson, DSI and Metro Mechanical (AKA Johnson Controls)?

-SD:

lazlo

07-21-2009, 12:28 AM

Sent you a PM SD -- don't want to post their names here.

By the way, these guys make small, often bizarre, stainless steel fittings for semiconductor process control and management, out of weird stainless alloys that I've never heard before (350 Stainless, for example). They're basically fixtures that carry gas or liquids between various stages of the fab equipment, and I gather they set the machines up, measure the distance between the machines, and then whip-up a quick blueprint for a pipefitting to connect the two.

These little sub-contractors fab the small pipefittings, clean it in solvent and vacuum pack it in a clean room, and Federal Express the part out to the fab, where it's opened and installed inside the clean room.

Both shops we went to had Eaton-Leonard CNC benders. This was one of them. The other had an orbital head:

http://www.eatonleonard.com/images07/Vb50New.jpg

Here's a cool video of it running:

http://www.eatonleonard.com/pages2007/VB80movie.html

Smokedaddy

07-21-2009, 01:15 AM

Thanks Robert,

That's what I used to do for a living ...

http://www.pbase.com/smokedaddy/image/77966323

http://www.pbase.com/smokedaddy/image/77966283

http://www.pbase.com/smokedaddy/image/97351959

http://www.pbase.com/smokedaddy/image/14820903/large

Regards,
-SD:

lazlo

07-21-2009, 01:25 AM

Wow, beautiful! The pictures are dated August 2007 -- whose fab was that?

Smokedaddy

07-21-2009, 10:30 AM

That's not a fab, it's one of the tools in our apprenticeship training facilities. I am a teacher there, via a community college. We teach them how to design, hook up, layout (manually and CAD) the piping to the tools. Isometric drawing, orbital welding and bend the tubing (yada yada).

BTW, just a point of information, since I've been doing this since 1967, I have never had to climb up on a ladder and bend tubing. Tubing is laid out, a isometric skeetch is drawn, then bent.

Running late for school,
SD:

MickeyD

07-21-2009, 11:32 AM

I have a big box of stainless tubing that I am finishing up for one of those shops now. Only downside is that it is all 316 stainless that precision bent and then I have to fixture it and machine holes. And to make it more fun it angles 4 degrees along one axis and 3 on the other one. Sort of like precision drilling holes along a snake...

Dawai

07-21-2009, 11:56 AM

I have never had to climb up on a ladder and bend tubing. Tubing is laid out, a isometric skeetch is drawn, then bent.

In a running and operating plant you must bend, fit, work the tube into place at times, or have numerous couplings everywhere it crosses. It is not a perfect world running tubing in poor working conditions that exist. You do however bend everything you can from the floor.

I can think of nothing more dangerous than a old chemical plant. A place where I have saw birds fall out of the sky, a buddy got a drop of something on his back that removed tattoo work for a quarter sized spot, no scar.(I'd like to know what that was). Velsicol chemical plant in Chattanooga Tn in the late 80s.

A place where the pipe is rotten, if you lean a ladder up against a piece of 2" pipe it may crumble and fall on you.

A place where I looked around to see my apprentice smoking a cigarette next to a railcar full of benzine.

A place where a whiff and a funny smell might be your last breath.

A place where most retirees don't live but a year or two past leaving.

NOT TO WORRY THOU, My Union hall, IBEW LU 175 has let the pipefitters get all the work. What they have not gotten I think the millwrights have. They see me with a tubing bender and file a grievance, I see them with a hart communicator/meter and am supposed to be silent.
I keep saying I will appear over at their hall and sign the job books.. perhaps break a few noses. Or in my thinking I might should start at my hall first.

They have gave out quite a few IC, ICT tickets, but can they do the jobs?? Even with a very expensive bender and swagelok computer? wetleg? ain't that where you drank too much beer??

lazlo

07-21-2009, 01:15 PM

That's not a fab, it's one of the tools in our apprenticeship training facilities.

Wow, nice training facility! That's a wafer etch or deposition machine in the second to last picture -- was that a donation?

Paul Alciatore

07-21-2009, 05:30 PM

I Dave,

....... The cost was something like $12,000 (that's not a typo). <grin>

-SD:

WAAAAAAAAYY too rich for my blood.

Smokedaddy

07-21-2009, 09:38 PM

Wow, nice training facility! That's a wafer etch or deposition machine in the second to last picture -- was that a donation?

We have a simulated clean room environment. I don't teach them HOW the tools work, only how to do the design and layout of the gases/piping, draw the isometric drawings (or CAD) and how to do progressive bending for the HP tubing.

http://www.pbase.com/smokedaddy/apprenticeship_clean_room

We end up with something like this eventually (see link below) after all of the above is done, layout etc. They run to the gas sticks, VMB's (Valve Manifold Boxes), VMP's (Valve Manifold Panels) not shown in the pictures. Then we have a small group come in to do the orbital welding (position welds etc.). That way it gives them an idea what to expect in the real world.

We also run the PCWS/R (Process Cooling Water), Vaccuum (foreline) and DI Water (via GF PVDF IR fittings/welding). I don't have any pictures of this. We tear everything out then start over. At the moment, this is how far we are.

http://www.pbase.com/smokedaddy/image/115230154

-SD:

Smokedaddy

07-21-2009, 09:56 PM

WAAAAAAAAYY too rich for my blood.

Me too. To be honest I didn't comprehend WHY this was developed in the first place but then again, I'm pretty slow sometimes. The KBS roller benders we use to bend the HP SS tube are indeed expensvie but you could buy about 35 of them for the cost of one of these pups. Plus I can precision bend just as good as the machine does and at least 6 times faster. You still have to layout the tubing so there is no time savings there. As far as tightening the Swagelok fittings I've never had a leak in my lifetime. You simply put a mark on the nut with a Sharpie and do a one and a quarter turn with the wrench. They also make a no-go gage as well. Again, I don't profess to know everything, nor have I experience every situation where this might be benifical.

Regards,
-SD:

Dawai

07-22-2009, 05:45 AM

Well, when I bent that thick tube on the ladder I was doing one handed push ups nightly. I really doubt in my current physical condition I could. A hand held bender like that is a pretty nice option. (if someone else bought it) Configure it on the floor, climb the ladder and Just push the button.

Roller benders.. that is the stuff, no deformation. A swagelok connector can slide all the way around the bend, meaning it is still round.

Besides, with multi-million dollar projects, a power bender is just a drop in the bucket. Less than they spend on hardhats on some jobs. NOW keeping ahold of the bender without someone stealing it, that'd be a chore. You'd have to take it home with you.

On big jobs there are people who steal carhart jackets daily, a expensive small item would not stand a chance. I have my jacket marked on the back, and both sleeves so I could spot it in the brass line. I can remember being on jobs and not being able to afford a warm jacket. Someone stealing it would upset me.

Smokedaddy

07-22-2009, 09:00 PM

Hey David,

Now that you've mentioned that scenario, without a doubt this would be the perfect tool for the job. Ha, and having it stay on the job is indeed another question. I never thought to ask but I bet you have the option to enter a password to activate it.